Skate America Nostalgia: Lake Placid 2009

On my totem pole of Skate Americas, Lake Placid 2009 would be at the bottom. Very nice people in the town, but the location is entirely too difficult to get to (over a two hour drive from the airport), and the arena leaves a lot to be desired.

In the men's event, Evan Lysacek finally got a Skate America gold medal after a few near misses. Shawn Sawyer was the highlight of the competition for me. Loved, loved, loved his Mozart program!

I spent most of the Ladies free skate watching the ice dance press conference through the window to the adjacent rink, but I remember Rachael Flatt skated great. I couldn't handle the Yu-Na Kim mania. Bus loads of Yu-Na fans had come just to see her, and they were going crazy. I didn't feel well (more on that later), and the hype was just too much.

In pairs, I was SO excited to finally see Xue Shen/Hongbo Zhao in person. They were on my list of skaters I wanted so badly to see - Jeff Buttle and Stephane Lambiel being the others (still waiting on them!). My favorite American pairs, Amanda Evora/Mark Ladwig and Brooke Castile/Ben Okolski, didn't skate well, so that put a damper on the pairs event for me.

Tanith Belbin/Ben Agosto skated great but didn't receive great scores, so that concerned me heading into the Olympics. Kim Navarro/Brent Bommentre skated their emotional "One" free dance very well, too. And I loved Anna Cappellini/Luca Lanotte's intense Requiem For a Dream program. Much of the rest of the free dance and all the Sunday events were kind of a blur to me. I had a bad grilled cheese sandwich from the arena's cafeteria on Saturday night and had death in my soul all of Sunday. I missed the Friends of Figure Skating breakfast, but I wasn't going to miss the free dance, so I powered through on saltine crackers and Gatorade.

The Exhibition was also a big blur, but there were a couple of performances I couldn't forget like Brandon Mroz skating to the uncensored version of "Greased Lightning" and Florent Amodio showing off his dance moves to Michael Jackson.

On to a more pleasant year - 2010 in Portland, Oregon! Daisuke wows us again, Armin gives us a thrill, and the Shibutanis show they've come to play with the big boys.